Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy
CRMEP is an independent educational association based in London. We organize events, publications and study groups. We provide open access to a wide range of writing and lectures in post-Kantian philosophy and critical theory, including Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis and the critique of the European tradition. Support the CRMEP
Events & Lectures
Lectures and seminars are free but registration is required.
![[CFP] CRMEP Graduate Conference: Reading Capital 60 Years On](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen%2F4%2F46%2FReading_Capital%252C_1966_French_edition.jpg&w=3840&q=76)
[CFP] CRMEP Graduate Conference: Reading Capital 60 Years On
The publication of Reading Capital [Lire le capital] marked an event in the full philosophical sense of the term: at the same time a rupture and irreversible beginning. A collaborative, seminary effort between multiple authors - convened by Louis Althusser - the text proposed a radical new reading of Das Kapital, one that was intentionally partial and unorthodox, and all the more productive for being so. Its almost immediate success within both domestic and international circles inaugurated a new tradition of philosophical thought under the banner of structural Marxism, thematising notions such as symptomatic reading, militant science, structural causality and theoretical anti-humanism. The precocious seminary contributors invariably went on to become hugely influential forces themselves, from Pierre Macherey, Jacques Ranciere, and Roger Esablet, to the beloved, one-time Professor at the CRMEP, Etienne Balibar. On the occasion of its 60-year anniversary, this conference seeks to revisit the intellectual legacy of Reading Capital, investigating its contemporary relevance, as well as the polemics that have emerged since its publication. We thereby invite papers that critically reflect on this legacy, drawing attention to the limits of the work as well as its unexplored potentials. We would also like to welcome papers that engage with Capital itself, and the various other readings that have become canonised in the intervening decades.
CRMEP Graduate Conference 2026: 'Reading Capital' Sixty Years On
Over 60 years after the publication of Louis Althusser and Étienne Baliber, eds, Reading Capital, this conference seeks to revisit its intellectual legacy, investigating its contemporary relevance and the polemics around it that have emerged since its publication.
Programme
10.00–11.15 Opening Keynote
Svenja Bromberg (Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London)
‘What becomes of ‘critique’ after the epistemological break and the late Marx’s entrance to science? — Marx’s method after and beyond Reading Capital’
11.15–11.30 Break
11.30–13.00 Panel 1: Reading Capital
Cooper Francis (CRMEP Alumnus)
‘The Structure of Exchange Society’
Nicole S. Monaghan (CRMEP MA)
‘On the Concept of the Proletariat’
Billie Cashmore (CRMEP PhD)
‘The Appearance of Value in Capital’
13.00–14.00 Lunch Break
14:00–15:30 Panel 2: Reading Reading Capital
Felicia Jing (New School for Social Research/Johns Hopkins University)
‘Science: from Munich to May’
Raphael Kalid (Concordia University)
‘Althusser’s Critique(s) of Hegel and the Turn to Spinoza’
Michael Giesbrecht (Duquesne University)
‘The Work of Concepts: Pierre Macherey on Marx’s “Process of Exposition” in Capital and Materialist Epistemology’
15.30 Break
15.45–17.15 Panel 3: Readings of Capital
Thomas Waller & Sean O’Brien (UC Dublin & University of Bristol)
‘Marx to the Letter’
Anna Beria (CRMEP)
‘Reading Capital and Reading Reading Capital Through the Concept of Life’
Daniel Fraser (UC Cork)
‘Useful Angels: Marxist Modernity in Bolívar Echeverría and Walter Benjamin’
17.15 Break
17.30 Closing Keynote
Peter Hallward (CRMEP)
‘Must the Working Class Die so the Proletariat Can Live?’
18.45 End
Books & Pamphlets
Promise & perdition in the thought of Gillian Rose
The essays collected in this eighth volume from CRMEP Books derive from a conference on the thought of the British sociologist and philosopher Gillian Rose, held at Swedenborg Hall in Bloomsbury, London, 18–19 June 2025. Interest in Rose’s wide-ranging body of critical work in the sociology and philosophy of modernity has grown significantly since her early death in 1995. In the wake of the publication of a Penguin Modern Classics edition of Rose’s Love’s Work (2024), along with some of her undergraduate lectures on critical theory from the University of Sussex at the end of the 1970s (Marxist Modernism, Verso, 2024), this thirty-year anniversary event set out to explore the play of promise and perdition – from which Love’s Work itself departed – across the full span of her writings.
Articles in this volume
Recordings
‘Of Another Nihilism: On Jacques Rancière’s Distant Freedom: Essay on Chekhov’ (Catherine Malabou)
A talk delivered at Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent's Street, London W1
'Foucault & the Woman in the Rorschach Dress' (Howard Caygill)
This is a recording of a lecture given at Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, on 20 November 2025: ‘The Woman in the Rorschach Dress: Foucault at Münsterlingen'
‘Process Metaphysics & Promiscuous Realism: Dupré's Philosophy of Biology’ (Stella Sandford)
This is a recording of a lecture given at Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, on 6 November 2025: ‘Process Metaphysics and “Promiscuous Realism”: Reflections on John Dupré's Philosophy of Biology’